Diplomacy of Distraction: "Why the Irish Hate the Jews"

"The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born; now is the time of monsters."

I’m not sure if a day will ever come when I won’t wake up to yet another Israeli nonsense highlighting how incapable they are of being part of an international community—one made up of sane, honest, and critical people willing to live side by side with others, respecting the global community, compatible with modern humanity, and able to coexist with mankind.

From those in Gaza maiming small children to pieces or deliberately targeting the beloved grandfathers who represent the best and kindest of what they’re trying to ungodly erase from this planet; to those on the outside of the battlefield.

Those living in the high-rises of Tel Aviv or other Western cities, working tirelessly to ensure battlefield operations continue and the status quo is upheld indefinitely: the illegal military occupation and apartheid of the Palestinian lands.

Those who live around the world yet feel a strong allegiance to Israel, rather than to the communities in which they reside, dedicating themselves to gaslighting, harassing, insulting, targeting, and smearing anyone appalled by the horrors Israel is inflicting on Gaza.

American zionist billionaire donors ousting the presidents of Ivy League schools for not being enough of a cheerleader for Israel. Zionist influencers lobbying Congress to ban student groups advocating for Palestine, citing claims of them 'being founded by Iran.' Zionist nonprofit organizations smearing and ruining the livelihoods of those criticizing the genocide in Gaza. Zionist legal associations silencing international doctors who treated the wounded in Gaza, preventing them from testifying about the horrors they witnessed.

Is there a name for it?

Not being able to voice your disagreement with the Palestinian people being slaughtered daily and wiped out of existence? In your own towns, countries, and places of birth?

Could we perhaps call it, I don’t know—the occupation?

And yet, the majority of Europe still fears that Islam is coming to get them, rather than worrying about this small but dangerous state; what we’ve painfully confirmed over the past two weeks, and 14 months—which will bomb, kill, and maim its way toward its goals, invade sovereign countries, take the land as it pleases, smear and threaten livelihoods of the people who oppose their medieval violence; then dare to cry antisemitism when people take offense to such medieval horrors?

The discrepancy currently unfolding between Israeli society and its supporters, and the rest of us opposing Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity—is that they didn’t expect the rest of the world to see the Palestinian people as people. Human beings.

And the definition of antisemitism, it seems to me, is anything less than adoration for the Jewish people.

How, then, is antisemitism not a sole proof of supremacy? If antisemitism requires one group of people not to be held to the same standard as everyone else, isn’t it simply a demand to be treated differently while claiming to want to be treated like everyone else?

What happened in Ireland?

On Sunday, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar announced the closure of the Israeli embassy in Dublin, due to the “extreme anti-Israel policy of the Irish government.” He also said: “There is a difference between criticism - and antisemitism based on the delegitimization and dehumanization of Israel and double standards towards Israel.”

See, it’s “criticism” that gets me here, and it has been pounding on me for 14 months. This constant line they all repeat indefinitely, from politicians to media and influencers on social media—“It’s ok to criticise Israel, but it’s not ok to …”, this deliberate disingenuousness—pretending that the criticism we direct their way about slaughtering civilians is somehow not a criticism, but rather something else entirely—what exactly? As we all keep repeating, we cannot take more children being shredded to bits. Please, stop.

Or people living in Israel, when they say, “It’s ok to criticize the government, I also don’t agree with this far-right Netanyahu government”—well, what are you doing about it? The government you are supposedly not agreeing with is murdering civilians en masse 40 miles away from you; the whole, entire disagreement anyone has with that far-right government is they are using our tax money to erase the Palestinian population!

How long are we going to dance around these tricks?

Israeli Foreign Minister also cited Ireland's support for what he called "politicized" proceedings against Israeli leaders by the ICC as well as Irish support for an action at the ICJ accusing Israel of genocide over its campaign in Gaza.

The smugness here.

Is blinding.

Gideon Sa’ar also accused Ireland of “crossing every red line”.

A state that is currently committing a live-streamed genocide and wiped out a quarter of the entire population of the Gaza Strip, a very red, red line if you ask every single criminal court on earth—is accusing the Irish government of crossing every red line.

Committing a genocide—not a red line.

Calling out the genocide, and asking for a ceasefire—a red line.

Yesterday, Professor Jeffrey Sachs called the Israelis committing these war crimes “7th Century B.C. zealots” and I don’t have better words.

Israeli Zealot minister had more words:

"Last night Ireland's antisemitic Prime Minister Simon Harris said in an interview 'Ireland is not anti-Israel but Ireland is absolutely anti the starvation of children. Is Israel starving children?"

He said Israel was working to enable humanitarian aid to reach Gaza and prevent civilian casualties while he said Hamas was looting aid and using civilians as human shields.

Prevent civilian casualties?

Ireland’s response.

Simon Harris, the Prime Minister of Ireland said the country had been unequivocal in its support for Israel’s right to defend itself within international humanitarian law and accused Benjamin Netanyahu of using the decision to close its embassy as “the diplomacy of distraction”.

“You know what I think is reprehensible? Killing children, I think that’s reprehensible. You know what I think is reprehensible? Seeing the scale of civilian deaths that we’ve seen in Gaza. You know what I think is reprehensible? People being left to starve and humanitarian aid not flowing,” he told reporters in Dublin on Monday, adding he was extremely proud of Ireland continually speaking out on behalf of innocent Palestinians.

Ireland fought the world’s biggest Empire for over 750 years. These people are trained for this, Israel. Top form.

Fighting words.

Alongside Gideon’s pile of nonsense, Dana Erlich, the Israeli ambassador to Ireland also protested against what she described as Ireland’s “extreme vilification and policy against Israel”.

That right there.

Extreme vilification and policy against Israel.

If you were to place this classic Israeli rhetoric in a mathematical equation, whatever variation you try—you would come up with superiority. Supremacy. There is no logical justification for feeling vilified by others calling for an end to occupation policies, apartheid, settler-colonialism, and genocide—a 'campaign' necessary to uphold all three—but rather a strongly ingrained sense of supremacy over the people you subjugate to achieve your goals, or even just us who refuse to accept it.

This piece by Haidar Eid explains it all better than I could:

“Genocide—as so many anticolonial works have documented – is and has always been an intrinsic component of settler colonialism. They are inseparable. And that is the case for settler-colonial Zionism.

One cannot understand the ongoing livestreamed slaughter of the two million people of Gaza and the bragging about it by the majority of Israelis on social media without relating it to that colonial hegemonic ideology.

Since its creation, Israel has systematically pursued the “elimination” of the native. Gaza right now is paying the price for what Israel’s leading fascist historian Benny Morris has argued is the Israeli failure to “transfer” all Palestinians out of Palestine in 1948.”

Why the Irish hate the Jews.

Yes, that’s an actual, real, published title.

Yesterday, the whole internet got into a tizzy over an article, aptly titled, Zionist specialty—’Why The Irish Hate the Jews’. When Ta-Nehisi Coates published his book The Message where he documented the apartheid witnessed in West Bank, the article came out, titled—Why Ta-Nehisi Coates Hates Israel. Amnesty? ICC? ICJ? B’Tselem? South Africa? I’m sure there’s one hate Israel article for everyone on that list, if you google it.

I read most of it. But this one, Why the Irish Hate the Jews—is by far the most abhorrent, detestable, racist, inaccurate piece of writing I have ever read. This is the author.

It’s hard to bypass her bio and even get to the article—”Jew living in the Jewish homeland. Any Arab who doesn't renounce the "right of return" cannot be allowed to remain in any territory we control.”

Where to go from here? This is a grown woman, probably a mother or even a grandmother. The … “cannot be allowed to remain in any territory we control.”

Whose language is that? Victim? Friendly neighbor? Or occupier?

This is her article in full.

~ I’ll just highlight important details for you.

“Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve seen more than one person ask why it is that the Irish (barring, as always, exceptional people among them) are such Jew-haters. So I decided to explain what has always seemed to me to be a pretty obvious thing.

Christianity is inherently antisemitic. If you’re a Christian, and you aren’t an antisemite, you might be offended by me saying that. But it’s true. It doesn’t mean that Christians are inherently antisemitic; just that Christianity is. Many modern Christians, having been acculturated in a society that frowns on bigotry, have found ways to disregard the antisemitism inherent in their religion, and focus on the positive aspects.

This is a good thing.

It may even be that Muslims will achieve that sort of civilized behavior in another 8 centuries or so. But let’s not forget that the Christians of 8 centuries ago could give today’s Muslims a run for their money when it came to savagery. Herding Jews into their synagogues, and locking the doors and setting the building on fire was not an uncommon recreational activity in the medieval Christian world.

But let me get back to Christianity being inherently antisemitic, because just making an assertion doesn’t mean anything unless I explain it.

A long time ago, in a suburb far, far away…

By way of illustration, let me tell you a little story that happened to me about 40 years ago. I was in college, but I was home visiting my family. It was Shabbat, and I’d already become observant by that point, and my family was not, so they were all out somewhere. Maybe having lunch at a deli. They’d kindly left the burglar alarm off so that I could leave the house if I wanted or needed to.

When the doorbell rang, it was a kid around my age, or maybe a little younger. He wanted to sell me some sort of window cleaner. I explained to him that I was the only one home, and that it being Shabbat, and me being a Jew, I couldn’t handle money, so I couldn’t buy his window cleaner.

The kid was fascinated. You see, he’d never had a chance to talk with a Jew before. At least not that he knew of. And he had questions. One of which was, “Why would anyone reject the lord and savior? The messiah and redeemer of all mankind?”

To which I responded, “Well, we don’t think he was the messiah or any of those things.”

He was gobsmacked. Utterly shocked. Which shocked me, too. His shock was from the idea that there was anyone who doubted the Christian concept of who Jesus was. My shock was the realization that there are Christians who honestly had/have no idea that we don’t think he was the messiah.

It kept echoing around in my head. How could you not hate people so utterly perverse that they believed — recognized — that the guy was all those things, and rejected him anyway?! Hate? I should say hate and fear. Because what mightn’t such folks be prepared to do?

It gave me an insight about Christian antisemitism that has stuck with me. This boy didn’t seem hateful at all. And he listened to me explain that we don’t think the guy fulfilled prophecies, or any of the things Christianity claims. I could tell that he was going to go home, or to his church, and find his pastor and ask him what was up with that, because I’d just told him something that pulled the rug out from the whole edifice of what he’d been taught.

But it helped me understand the fury and fear and rage Christians have had towards us for most of their history. Entirely aside from the obvious fact that our continued existence throughout the centuries gave the lie to their belief that we were going to wither away.

But as I say, most Christians today have become civilized. Not always for great reasons. Possibly the most prevalent reason is the decline of belief in God at all in Western society. It’s resulted in people drifting away from Judaism, from Christianity, and even from Islam (though in that case, you do have to worry about your family killing you if they find out). And it’s certainly led to those who remain committed to their religion, by and large, ignoring the more… shall we say “unsavory” aspects of their religion.

I’ve met numerous Orthodox Jews who refuse to take the command to wipe out any descendants of Amalek as being operative today. Granted, we don’t know who might be descended from them, so it is in fact not operative today, de facto, but most Orthodox Jews, I believe, faced with a 100% proven Amalekite — proven in any way that would satisfy the person — would still refuse to kill them, because the very idea is so completely at odds with their cultural underpinnings, however un-assimilated they may consider themselves. And this is true of 100% of non-Orthodox Jews, as well.

But we were talking about Ireland…

But there is one place in the Christian world where religion has remained a very, very immediate and critical issue. Even a life or death issue, for quite a long time, extending into modern times. And that’s Ireland.

The sectarian warfare between Protestants and Catholics in Ireland has resulted in the societal retardation of their culture when it comes to religion. They still feel their ancient Christianity in their bones. And as a result, their views of Jews are closer to those of medieval Christians than those of modern ones.

It would be odd if they were not antisemitic, given all that.

I can’t make any predictions about what will happen with the Irish over time. The whole embracing of the Arab propaganda against Israel might stick them even further into the mire of barbaric hatred. Or there could be a backlash that has the opposite result. I guess we’ll have to wait and see.”

The supremacy, the racism, the historical fallacies, the comfort with which she speaks, secure and sure that nothing will happen to her—imagine the Irish publishing an article titled 'Why Israel Hate the Irish.' How many hells would break loose at the same time?

Calling Christians inherently antisemitic, Irish socially retarded, Muslims barbaric and uncivilized while dropping 2000-pound bunker buster bombs on small children, committing unimaginable war crimes, and violating countless international laws, still upholding colonial hegemonic ideology, and refusing to let go of the prosperity of apartheid and settler colonialism.

“The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born; now is the time of monsters.”—Antonio Gramsci.

Or it’s all probably just antisemitic.